Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.com and at disquiet.com/junto, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just over four days to upload a track in response to the assignment. Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate. There’s no pressure to do every project. It’s weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when you have the time.

Tracks will be added to this playlist for the duration of the project:

This project was posted in the late morning, California time, on Thursday, June 16, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, June 20, 2016.

Disquiet Junto Project 0233: Netlabel (NND Remix)
The Assignment: Make one track from three different netlabels, courtesy of a Creative Commons license.

Seeing the “ND” tag on a netlabel release is a major buzzkill. The “ND” tag denotes a Creative Commons license that rules out creating derivative work. Fortunately lots of netlabels do allow for creative reuse, and this occasional series of collaborative remixes seeks to celebrate that activity, and encourage other netlabels to switch off the ND tag. Take “NND” to mean “not no derivatives.”

Step 1: Download the three tracks that will provide source audio for this remix:

Use the first 30 seconds of “HNY” off the album Wormbole by ʞık (Karl & Karlik) on the Bump Foot netlabel:

http://www.bumpfoot.net/bump207.html

Use the first 30 seconds of “Pepper Jelly” off the album Recombinations by Andre Darius and Riley Theodore on the Haze netlabel:

https://hazenetlabel.bandcamp.com/album/recombinations

Use the first 30 seconds of “Autista 3” off the album Autista by Pablo Reche on the Impulsive Habitat netlabel:

http://www.impulsivehabitat.com/releases/ihab113.htm

Step 2: Create an original piece of work including that source material.

Step 3: Upload your completed track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.

Step 5: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Deadline: This project was posted in the late morning, California time, on Thursday, June 16, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, June 20, 2016.

Length: Length is up to you, though between two and three minutes seems about right.

Upload: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, only upload one track for this project, and be sure to include a description of your process in planning, composing, and recording it. This description is an essential element of the communicative process inherent in the Disquiet Junto. Photos, video, and lists of equipment are always appreciated.

Title/Tag: When adding your track to the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com, please in the title to your track include the term “disquiet0233.” Also use “disquiet0233” as a tag for your track.

Download: It is necessary that your track is set as downloadable, and that it allows for attributed remixing and attribution, per the Creative Commons license of the source audio.

Linking: When posting the track, please be sure to include this information:

More on this 233rd weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Make one track from three different netlabels, courtesy of a Creative Commons license” — at:

http://disquiet.com/0233/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto/

Join the Disquiet Junto at:

Subscribe to project announcements here:

http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place on a Slack (send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for inclusion) and at this URL:

http://disquiet.com/forums/

Image associated with this project is by Jet Lee and it is used thanks to a Creative Commons license:

Certainty Reducing Signals is the title of a 10-track set that C. Reider released back on July 13, aka Netlabel Day. That’s the day when we celebrate the phenomenon of small record labels that actively distribute their music for free, often — though perhaps not as often as one might want — with the intention that listeners subsequently rework the music themselves. Reider is a longtime proponent of experimental music and creative re-use. And true to form, the record’s liner notes include details on what went into it. (Full disclosure: Three of the tracks originated in the Disquiet Junto series of weekly projects, and I’m thanked in the notes.)

One highlight is “Dirigible,” a rusty, wired, dense thicket of noises that has a delightfully slow internal pulse. Starting out as a Junto project, it employs as source material Marsh and May’s album Falling More Slowly, from the Linear Obsessional netlabel.

Another favorite is a “site recording” titled “Vaporizing Rain,” a mix of rattling and white noise, likely the title substance hitting a metal roof. The result, two minutes in length, is a thoroughly engaging generative rhythm. True to the generative paradox, it is never quite the same twice, yet consistent throughout.

(The audio was autoplaying, and in advance of me sorting out how to turn off the autoplay, please proceed to freemusicarchive.org to listen.)

Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.com and at Disquiet.com, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just over four days to upload a track in response to the assignment. Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate.

Tracks will be added to this playlist for the duration of the project:

This assignment was made in the evening, California time, on Thursday, May 21, 2015, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, May 25, 2015.

Every couple of months the Disquiet Junto hosts a netlabel remix. All of the source audio for a netlabel remix is available for free, non-commercial download and creative reuse thanks to a Creative Commons license. This series of “netlabel remixes” is intended to promote that sort of thoughtful, collaborative sharing.

The netlabel Dark Winter has already released three albums this year. We’re going to use a snippet of one track from each of those records, and in combining them produce a kind of sonic snapshot of the label.

Step 1: Create a new piece of music by using nothing but the following segments of the following songs:

Use the first 30 seconds from “Part 1” off Scott Lawlor’s World of Ice and Snow:

http://www.darkwinter.com/dw095.html

Use the first 30 seconds from “Underground Shelter” off Nadador Nocturno’s Harsh Winters in the Distance:

http://www.darkwinter.com/dw096.html

Use the first 30 seconds from “DSM III – The Cristalline Entity” off Ovdk vs Seetyca’s Allegorik Symptom Before the Cataclysm:

http://darkwinter.com/dw097.html

Step 2: Upload your track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.

Step 3: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Deadline: This assignment was made in the evening, California time, on Thursday, May 21, 2015, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, May 25, 2015.

Length: The length of your finished work should be roughly between one minute and four minutes.

Upload: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, only upload one track for this assignment, and include a description of your process in planning, composing, and recording it. This description is an essential element of the communicative process inherent in the Disquiet Junto. Photos, video, and lists of equipment are always appreciated.

Title/Tag: When adding your track to the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com, please include the term “disquiet0177-netlabelportrait” in the title of your track, and as a tag for your track.

Download: Set your track as downloadable, and that it allows for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution), per the license of the source audio.

Linking: When posting the track, please be sure to include this information:

More on this 177th Disquiet Junto project — “Use samples of recent Dark Winter Records releases to produce a sonic image of the label” — at:

Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.com and at Disquiet.com, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just over four days to upload a track in response to the assignment. Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate.

Tracks will be added to this set for the duration of the project:

This assignment was made in the late afternoon, California time, on Thursday, April 23, 2015, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, April 27, 2015.

Step 5: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Deadline: This assignment was made in the evening, California time, on Thursday, April 23, 2015, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, April 27, 2015.

Length: The length of your finished work should be the length of the original, 5:39, or slightly longer.

Upload: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, only upload one track for this assignment, and include a description of your process in planning, composing, and recording it. This description is an essential element of the communicative process inherent in the Disquiet Junto. Photos, video, and lists of equipment are always appreciated.

Title/Tag: When adding your track to the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com, please include the term “disquiet0173-overversion” in the title of your track, and as a tag for your track.

Photo associated with this project by Gareth, used via Creative Commons license. In the Flickr entry, he wrote of the photo: “The past is breaking through. As cranes go up daily in Sheffield city centre, traces of the past are breaking through at ground level – ignoring the double yellow lines.”

Caroline Park in the past week or so posted a short teaser of her then forthcoming album, Less Than Human. At just 46 seconds, it seemed just a little short to constitute a standalone post here, and fortunately the releasing label, Pan y Rosas Discos, has followed up with the full, freely downloadable set of five tracks, and posted three of them on its SoundCloud account for streaming. The album’s brief liner note includes this instruction:

play at full volume,
with good speakers
in a nice room.

no head/earphones please (sound needs space).

Do follow the instructions when the opportunity arises. The material in the SoundCloud subset of Less Than Human ranges from luminous and droning (“Plantlife”) to ominous and distant (“A Moth Is Born”) to stuttered and disorienting (“Fractured Barnacles”), and all of it is best experienced in full body, the nuances not left to the compressed nature of headphones, and the volume not adjusted for proximity’s sake.

Missing from the SoundCloud set are the album’s opening and closing tracks, “Being States” and “Gldufglsd.” The first is perhaps the album’s most ambitious, a gentle melody refracted through subtle, pinging percussion. As for “Gldufglsd,” the album’s longest cut, at over 11 minutes, it is, like “Plantlife,” structured around a low-level drone, heard here below a harsh shimmer, out of which slowly arises a warmer tone whose sense of comfort is balanced by the increased threat of that buzzsaw shimmer. It seems to suggest a sequel to “A Moth Is Born,” in which the promise of a heat brings the end.

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Current Activities

• October 13, 2016: This day marks the start of the 250th weekly Disquiet Junto project.
• November 16, 2016: I'll be sharing the mic at Adobe Books in San Francisco with my fellow 33 1/3 author Evie Nagy for an evening hosted, from 7pm to 10pm, by Marc Kate (facebook.com).
• December 1, 2016: A likely speaking engagement. Details to come.
• December 13, 2016: This day marks the 20th anniversary of Disquiet.com.
• January 5, 2017: This day marks the 5th anniversary of the Disquiet Junto.
• Ongoing: The Disquiet Junto series of weekly communal music projects explore constraints as a springboard for creativity and productivity. There is a new project each Thursday afternoon (California time), and it is due the following Monday at 11:59pm: disquiet.com/junto.
• My book on Aphex Twin's landmark 1994 album, Selected Ambient Works Vol. II, published as part of the 33 1/3 series, an imprint of Bloomsbury, is now in its second printing. It can be purchased at amazon.com, among other places.